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Keep the Government Open

With only four days left to head off a crippling government shutdown, Senate Democrats have been receptive to a new proposal from House Republicans to keep the government going with only a modest round of cuts from President Obama’s own reduction plan.

The offer sounds as if it contains the germ of a good compromise, except for one big problem: it only extends government funding for two weeks.

In a matter of days, the two chambers would be right back where they are now, with House leaders demanding ruinous cuts and threatening to close the government’s doors if they did not get their way. Rather than take this deal, the Senate should build on the idea of advancing some of President Obama’s cuts but in exchange for paying for the government’s functions through the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30.

The threat of a shutdown is a serious one. Once the stopgap measure now supplying money to the federal government expires, hundreds of thousands of workers would be furloughed, halting vital services like veterans’ health care and passport processing, and possibly slowing the distribution of benefit checks. Essential services would continue, but the impact on a fragile recovery could be devastating.

None of that has in the slightest deterred House Republicans — the fire-breathing freshmen and the older members who are afraid of them — from pursuing their single-minded goal of disemboweling the government.

They took advantage of the Democrats’ failure to pass a budget last year and approved a bill that makes nearly $62 billion in cuts just over the next seven months. Much of the effort pursued longstanding partisan goals like eliminating programs for disadvantaged minorities, rather than real deficit reduction.

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The impact of these reckless, largely ideologically targeted cuts could be even more devastating for the recovery than a brief government shutdown. Hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs, and not just for a few days or weeks. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder would be hurt the most.

No one would have paid much attention if the stopgap spending resolution from last year did not run out on March 4. The House Republicans have exploited that leverage to the fullest, saying they won’t even consider a temporary spending resolution from the Senate that does not contain substantial cuts.

The latest offer from the House, drawing on an idea that has been discussed in the Senate, would buy two weeks of government operations in exchange for $4 billion in cuts. To make the offer palatable, the House is willing to make about $2.7 billion of those cuts from earmarks, and the rest from programs that the president has already proposed cutting in next year’s budget, including highway and education spending.

The House is essentially asking the Democrats to agree to all the easy cuts up front, while continuing to dangle a sword over the process that could drop again as early as March 18. The war of words would quickly begin again, as would the Republicans’ demands for their more damaging cuts. That would create ever more uncertainty in the markets and in the lives of many thousands of people who could be affected by a shutdown.

Repeatedly negotiating under threat is no way to run a government. The real battle should be over next year’s budget. Accelerating some 2012 cuts to get through this year makes sense, but only in exchange for a resolution that carries the government through Sept. 30. Democrats should insist on it, and if Republicans instead choose to close the government’s doors, at least the public will know the full price of their extremism.

A version of this editorial appears in print on February 28, 2011, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Keep the Government Open. Today's Paper|Subscribe